Skydiving From Space: Joseph Kittinger

In 1960, Joe Kittinger flew 30km straight up into the sky using a pressurized, high-altitude balloon. This very nearly made him the first man in space. He then jumped. Kittinger free-fell for over twenty kilometers – at which point he was moving so fast he broke the sound barrier. He had all but left the earth's atmosphere; the sky around him was pitch black; he could see the outlines of entire continents; and the haiku-like abstraction of his available reference points – earth, balloon…